Satan's influence is so intertwined into our society, our culture, and unfortunately our homes. After experiencing the mighty change of heart, I was left with heightened spiritual sensitivities and found myself feeling uneasy about many things in our home. At first we eliminated all the obvious things that needed to go - like the toys and entertainment that did not invite the Spirit. Even movies or cartoons that contained a small amount of crude humor offended my spirit. It seemed that just a small stain of the world on something was not to be overlooked - the Spirit was guiding us to eliminate everything that is not worthy of a holy place. We threw out all the CD's and DVD's except for a few spiritually uplifting ones and then a few months later we just sold the whole television with the entertainment center and every thing else that went with it.
We eliminated all the books that seemed to "dumb-down" our children or fill their precious minds and spirits with nonsense. We eliminated all the other books that contained only portions of truth mixed in with the philosophies of mankind. We eliminated the coloring books that had too much of a focus on worldly or abstract things. Later we eliminated all plastic toys and then moved on to all the other plastic things in our home.
Another area where I felt strongly that we needed to clean-out was our kitchen and pantry. All the processed foods, all the dyes, and all the genitically-modified ingredients needed to go.
I also felt sick inside that we had so much clothing. I knew this feeling was God showing me that we needed to make changes. I recognized that we had more than we needed and because of this abundance we were not grateful for what we had.
Honestly, I had a basket of clothing that needed mended that I had not gotten to in over a year because we did not even notice they were missing from our wardrobe. So we started a big project of sorting through the clothing. First and foremost we eliminated anything with cartoon characters on it (see my previous post to understand why). Once we had that influence out, I then noticed that certain clothing gave me an unsettled feeling and others did not. So I just sorted everything following this feeling. In the end I was left with a whole pile of clothing to throw out, these items were made of polyester, spandex, nylon, rayon. The other pile of clothing was mostly cotton with a couple silk and wool items.
"Why natural fabrics?" That was the question I was wondering so I searched online and found many good reasons to embrace natural fibers and eliminate the synthetic ones as well as the heavily dyed fabrics. However, the real answer came as I pondered on the creation. When Christ created the earth, under Heavenly Father's direction, He created all that man would need and then gave man stewardship over all those things. This stewardship gave man an opportunity to learn to exercise righteous dominion over the elements of the earth just as Christ did. When we learn to use the very creations righteously that Christ placed here for us we are taking our first steps toward creating worlds of our own later. For example:
A woman who makes a dinner from scratch (starting with wheat, natural yeast, potatoes, celery, onions, carrots, sea salt, herbs, etc.) is learning more how to be a righteous steward over the elements than a woman who grabs a box of something processed and heats it up for dinner.
If that first woman had grown her vegetables in her own garden then she would reap the blessings even more for being a righteous steward over the earth.
However, Satan would much rather keep us too busy rushing our children back and forth to their sports practices in the evening than have us use our time learning the basics of Godhood and caring for the health of the body and spirit (see earlier posting about The Fruits of an Over-Scheduled Life).
You are amazing!
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